


To Build A Home

by bodysnatch3r



Series: The Heistverse [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>Alternate Universe</strong>. After the events of Army Road, number 5, Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews barely pulled through-- alive, but scarred, they try to navigate the world as it spins around them. There's a new baby to take care of, after all--</p><p>and there are hearts that need to begin healing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Build A Home

**Author's Note:**

> for the three people without whom heistverse would never have happened-- to selina, vanessa and vee.  
> and for everyone else who continuously supports this little venture of mine, let it be through comments, kudos, or asks on tumblr. you are all delightful, thank you so much.  
> happy holidays!
> 
> trigger warning for discussion of pregnancies and a premature birth

 The first contraction comes between the denim and the casualwear on the fourth floor of the Knightsbridge Harvey Nichols, amid the festive blinking of Christmas decorations and the endless songs the radio plays on a loop. Becca flinches and she has to press a hand to her mouth not to yelp out loud as Mariah Carey reminds the listeners that, in fact, it is only _them_ she wants for Christmas-- she has to take a deep, deep breath, and then a second one follows, stronger than the one before.

“Oh, no. No.”

Three months too early.

“Becca?”

Alex's the one she was standing next to, so Alex is the one who notices. She has to steady her breathing enough to be able to mutter,

“I think my waters broke.”

 ***

Dis answers her phone as she's pulling cookies out of the oven.

“Kee?”

“Mum?”

She frowns because his tone was _scared_ , “Speaking. What is it?”

It takes him, as always, a moment to organize his words. She knows not to rush. She knows he's trying his best. She waits.

“Becca's in hospital.”

“She's _what_?”

“Her water's broke.”

Dis closes her eyes and exhales.

“All right. How is she?”

“Wi-- with Fee, already in. We, we. Don't know.”

“Is Alex there with you?”

Someone must have had to drive them around, after all.

“We're at. Royal Brompton.”

“I'm on my way.”

 ***

“It's okay, we're all right, I'm right here.”

Fili's cane's leaning against the wall next to Becca's bed and his hand, his left hand is buried in her hair, alternatively massaging as best he can and simply offering weight (trembling, shaky unstable weight) and presence. His other hand is holding hers, and she is simply breathing, or trying to, and he smiles when she opens her eyes.

There's an endless swarm of doctors around them, but right then all that matters is keeping each other's beating hearts going, which they have always done, which now feels more important than ever.

“Hey, you.”

She tries to blurt out something in response and can only manage to breathe, as deep as halfway through her lungs which isn't deep at all can manage, and she grits her teeth.

“I'm _here_ , Becky. C'mon.”

“I know.”

Her smile is as exhausted as her eyes are scared. A nurse asks Fili to move out of the way, and a doctor turns and she says, sharply, “Sir, we're going to have to ask you to leave.”

“What? No. No. I can't, that's my--”

“Sir.”

“ _Fee_.”

Rebecca looks at him, and her gaze is snapped in half by the following contraction. He flinches when she bends her head back, and glares at the nurse and shoves his way past him again and then presses his forehead to Rebecca's, hand once again buried in her hair, and she tries to clutch it and the IV in her hand hurts when it bumps against his knuckles.

“I'm so _scared_ , Fee, I'm so--

“I'm right here.”

“You _have_ to go.”

“I'm not--”

“Fili!”

His uncle's voice. Not Thorin's: Dwalin's, standing in the doorway.

“Fili, c'mon.”

“I love you.”

“What if she-- what if _she_ \-- Fili, what if--”

“You'll be fine, Becca, I _swear it_. You'll _both_ be fine.”

“Fili, _they need you to go_.”

He turns to Dwalin who's just spoken in a very, very low whisper and then back to Rebecca and then he grabs his cane, and when he's outside of the room Dwalin doesn't even allow him the time to breathe and start crying, he's already grabbing him and holding him as tight as he can, bone crushing, fear quenching. Still, Fili takes a shaky breath.

“She'll be okay, lad.”

“Fili?”

“ _Mum_.”

It's in her arms that he allows himself to cry, and he'd run if he could still run without it hurting, and she finds him halfway, and she _holds him_.

“C'mere, puppy.”

“She's so _scared_.”

“I know.”

She presses a kiss to his temple, as he's buried his face in her shoulder, and rubs his back and arms.

“She's all _alone_.”

“The doctors're there, Fee. They know what they're doing.”

Dwalin isn't entirely sure the words he's saying hold any comfort at all. Even to him they ring hollow, and difficult and heavy, and he doesn't know how he manages to even believe them.

“Besides,” and Dis' voice is forcing itself into the shape of hope, no matter how many bones it has to break to do so, “you were early too, and you turned out just fine. We _both_ did.”

And yet it happens so _fast_ , like a thunderstorm.

***

He stubs out his fourth cigarette and then stares at the phone. He should-- he _should_ dial the number. It's the right thing to do, and he'd want to know (and, but this stays to himself and maybe occasionally his brother, when he's frustrated and the water pipes aren't fixing the way they should, Thorin's idea of cutting himself off from his family is a bloody _idiotic_ one), and he should be the one to tell him.

 _You bloody oaf_.

Dwalin dials the number as he lights his fifth cigarette, and he coughs.

_You should stop._

_...I should stop_.

Since when has the conscious law-abiding voice in his head been _Thorin's_? A while, it seems, since he willfully shrugs it off and even replies to it from time to time.

The phone rings. Once, twice, and Dwalin moves from where he's pacing outside the hospital doors to let a wheel chair wheel by more easily and starts pacing up and down the sidewalk.

“Hello?”

He answers: unexpected.

“Hey, hi, Thorin... hi.”

He answers _back_ , which weighs much more than he'd like it to.

“What do you want?”

“Listen, I know you're busy brooding in your corner feeling sorry for all the shit you've pulled and don't want to talk to any of us, but-- Becca's in hospital.”

A pause.

“What?”

“Well, you know how babies are-- Kiara demanded she be released _now_.”

 _...you're still an idiot_.

“The baby's premature?”

History repeats itself in ways it never should.

“Yep. Becky's under right now, Fee's... reasonably terrified, Dee's with him though, and Alex and Kili ran out to get something to eat.”

 _I need you here_.

No. No, that's not something you say. Not to Thorin Oakenshield (he'd tried that _once_ , “ _I miss you_.”, and it hadn't ended well), “So. If you wanted to stop by, we'd appreciate it.”

A pause, longer this time. For a moment Dwalin thinks he's hung up and he simply didn't notice. Thorin stares at his hands and touches the scar around his neck, avoids thinking what he must look like, and then he sighs. Dwalin hears that, as quiet as the breeze, and then Thorin says, like a trickle of blood from his mouth,

“Maybe.”

***

He doesn't take his scarf off unless he's alone. It's coiled, like a noose made of expensive black cloth, around his neck, breathing as he breathes, following the creases in his skin. There's a small fragment of scar tissue, barely visible, that peeks out from the top, kissed by stubble, barely seen, and he hopes no one will notice it, sear it in their minds and deny him the dignity of being anything but trauma and a newspaper headline.

He follows his footsteps to the room, like breadcrumbs or hope or memories that don't belong to him (“ _I'd like to see my brother, please_.”). Fili's dozing lightly in a chair next to Becca's bed, holding her hand, Dis is staring out the window. Kili's rummaging through the leftovers of the Chinese he and Alex had grabbed, and is the first one who notices Thorin, who's standing in the doorway, too scared to even knock on the jamb.

“ _Well_ , _well_ then. _Fan-- fancy seeing you here_.”

Dis turns and has to blink for a few seconds before realizing who she's looking at. She sighs, and then she smiles. Thorin glances at Rebecca and Fili.

“She's fine. She's stable.”

“The baby?”

Pursed lips and a small tilt of her head.

“That's a different story.”

Thorin makes a deep, deep sigh, and still doesn't move from the doorway.

“I remember how _you_ were.”

“The only reason it all happened was because I weighed _six stone_. The situation's a bit different now.”

She smiles, and he smiles too, and the last three months suddenly seem like they've been bridged with a breath. He clears his throat and lowers his head, and fingers at his scarf, pulls it loose enough to breathe but not loose enough to show anything of what it's hiding underneath.

“Thorin. Listen.”

He looks up and his sister's covered the distance. Kili swallows the mouthful of noodles he was chewing and watches in silence as Dis places both hands on Thorin's shoulders and he tenses.

“Thank you. For coming.”

He shrugs and avoids her eyes, and she is okay with it.

Dwalin sees him in the doorway from afar as he's coming back from the bathroom. He sees him, and he stops in the flickering lonely lights of a hospital three days before Christmas, and he thinks-- he thinks there's an ocean in his heart, and it's filling with blue again, just like that, as easy as it was to see his shoulders wrapped in his coat.

“Thorin.”

Thorin pulls his head up and turns, and Dwalin sees Dis behind him, and he blinks, and his eyes are electric in the neon of the lamps.

“Dwalin.”

He says it simply, like the word's never been absent from his lips in all these years, in the three months he tore through himself in the empty loneliness of his own hands, _now he's back, and he's there_.

“You came.”

“I did.”

“ _You came_.”

It's too early in the conversation to already become a broken record.

“Who's there?”

Interrupted like bodies falling into ice amid the light creeping through the snow-- an Australian accent, and Thorin whipping around like a surprised flamingo. Oh, it makes Dwalin's chest feel like it's coiling around his heart-- both the curve of Thorin's back as it twists and the sound of Rebecca's small murmur, and Fili wakes with a jolt (he hadn't been sleeping anyway) and he smiles.

He _smiles_.

Becca squeezes his hand and Fili presses his lips to her hand, eyes closed for a moment, “Hey, you. Hey. Hey. Hey,” his voice low and raspy and exhausted.

“You gave, gave us quite a scare, Becks.” Kili's laughing, though, even as he speaks. Rebecca blinks at him, sees Dwalin like a blur, and she smiles, and then--

and then she _remembers_.

“Kiara. Kiara-- Fee, Fee,” grabbing his face so he looks at her, “ _Fee is she_ \--”

“She's... stable,” Dis' voice low like the soothing sound of waves, “she's in the NICU, they're keeping an eye on her.”

“Can I see her?”

“When you've rested.”

She opens her mouth to reply, and then is distracted.

“Thorin? _Thorin_. What're you--”

“Don't overexcite yourself, dear.”

She frowns at Dis and then looks back to Thorin, and narrows her eyes, as much as she can manage in the fog of the anesthesia that's finally wearing off and the pain that's starting to spread from her abdomen into the rest of her body, cutting the wind from her lungs.

But Thorin shrugs, and clears his voice, and simply says,

“I just... thought it was time to come home.”

And for some reason, by the end of that sentence he's staring at Dwalin, and Dwalin can't hold his gaze. 

***

She is so small she fits in Dwalin's open palm, and it is daunting. She fits in his palm that's covered in a plastic glove, mask to avoid breathing any bacteria onto her, and he holds her, all wrinkly skin and small flailing fists.

He holds her, and he smiles at her, and he coos, very quietly, “Hello, little one.”

“You can put her on your chest, you know.”

He smiles at Becca despite the fact that both of them are wearing masks and neither can see each other's expressions, “Won't she...?”

“Oh, no. The doctors say she needs it, since she left my womb so early. C'mon.”

She leads him to a chair.

“Just open your shirt so she can feel your heartbeat. Did you never do that with Fee?”

“I wasn't... as involved, when Fee was born. I must've seen him once or twice.”

Kiara rests her head close to his sternum and splays a hand on his chest hair, minuscule in her wool hat, her eyes still closed, the feeding tube attached to her nose. She _gurgles_ , and Dwalin can't tear his eyes off of her.

He looks up at her mother, and mock frowns, “Thrain Oakenshield was there, _supervising_ that his son's male heir be healthy and whole. Although I think back then he still hoped Thorin was going to have _children_. I didn't like him that much.”

Rebecca laughs, and delicately fixes Kiara's hat so it's covering her ears better.

“How are you feeling?”

“How should I feel, Dwals? Scared. She's so...” a pause to find the words, the right ones, “she's so _small_.”

“But healthy.”

“They don't know that yet. There was fluid in her lungs just last week. I want-- No, I _need_ , to keep her safe. D'you understand? From anything. From everything. There's a million little things that could go wrong, right now, and I'd lose her for good with no way of saving her. After being such a shitty host, I want to at least try and be a good mum.”

“ _Becky_ \--”

“From what little I've seen, I'm sure you'll be a _splendid_ mum.”

Becca _jolts_ , Dwalin simply sighs. Thorin's already wearing a mask, the scarf is still on, always on. Rebecca turns towards him.

“Is it a tendency of _all_ Oakenshield men? Just appear, scare the shit out of people and then disappear for another month and a half to do your dark bidding elsewhere?”

A moment where Thorin seems panicked: he doesn't know how to react, Dwalin recognizes it in his slightly widening eyes and the subtle clenching of his fists. And then he laughs, a single snort, and that catches both Becca and Dwalin completely off guard.

“Thank you, I was bidding on a desk.”

She frowns. Dwalin frowns, too. Kiara snores lightly.

“I don't get it.” Becca says. She genuinely doesn't.

“Bidding, you know? Like on eBay. _Doing my dark bidding_ versus, actually bidding in an auction? No? Yes?”

“OH. Oh, okay.”

“Did that... not work?”

“No, it was fine,” she stands, “I've heard... worse jokes.”

“Oh, you don't have to leave, I just wanted to see her, but--”

“No, no, it's fine, you've never seen her. I get to hang out with her _a lot_. It's fine.”

“Okay.”

 _Please don't leave me alone with Dwalin_.

She closes the door behind herself with a soft click, smiling encouragingly at the two as she does so. Dwalin looks at her as if she's committed high treason. Thorin simply looks scared, the kind of scared where you don't know if you'll find an axe murderer behind the corner or an innocuous puppy. She wonders if she's done the right thing.

Thorin stares at the chair Becca was sitting in across from Dwalin, and doesn't know where else to look. He decides to settle onto the incubator, whizzing next to him, glass and metal contraption that looks much more like a prison than he thought it would.

“Would you like to hold her?”

“No. No, I'd-- I'm pretty sure I'd drop her.”

Dwalin's standing with slow careful movements, the girl held securely in his hands.

“Even Oin Longbeard held her just fine. No dropping whatsoever.”

“My cousin?”

“Oh yeah, the whole gang. Dain said hello and asked after you. Balin said you were, oh... how did he put it? _Under the weather_.”

Kiara starts fussing, and Dwalin hushes her. He does it with his voice low, a vibration reaching for her heart, trying to soothe the beating of it, like fingertips dipping in water, just a pinch, and eyes following the waves as they expand.

“There you go. There you go.”

“Remember how small Fili was?”

Dwalin glances up at him and smirks, “He was bigger than this bugger. But I remember how small his _mother_ was.”

“And once again, Frerin was right.”

The name like a bullet between the back of his teeth. Thorin realizes the weight of the name he's just spoken, and he lowers his gaze, and he tugs at his scarf.

“You sure you don't want to hold her?”

“I--”

Dwalin's cradling her against his chest, and Thorin knows he thought himself immortal, untouchable, he knows he thought seeing Dwalin wouldn't tear his chest clean in two again. But some things aren't up to us to decide, and Dwalin's grey eyes still make him think the world's ending. He thought he'd stopped feeling that, too, but so many preconceptions and affirmations rushed out with his blood on the floor of Army Road, number 5. And he looks at the smallest baby he's ever seen, and Dwalin's hands like armor to cover her and keep her safe.

“Really. I'm scared to hurt her.”

“You won't. I know you.”

This he does.

“You won't hurt her.”

He sees Thorin worry his lip behind the thin paper mask. He sees him sigh, and absent-mindedly clutch his own neck.

“C'mon,” and this is how life is, it's continuous searching for bell towers to jump off of and take flight, like mad little birds and the humans that love them, “Blue Eyes.”

And Thorin closes his eyes, and smirks, and shakes his head, and presses a hand to the mask that's covering his mouth. Not in disgust, for once, simply out of habit.

“Sure. Sure. I'll hold her.”

Dwalin's eyes light up with the smile Thorin can't see, only catch the ghost of in the crinkle of his face, and the laughter lines that blossom.

“Just. Sit over here. Move the scarf out of the way, open your shirt.”

“What?”

“That way she can hear your heart beating.”

A small thing, a delicate thing, this little baby immersed in the flutters of a living heart, her breathing like the beat beneath her ear, through the vibrations of a body living, through the quietness that breathes through every thing that's alive. Thorin glares at Dwalin and at Kiara, swaddled in her blanket, covered by her hat,

“Hasn't she been out of the incubator long enough?”

“Let her feel her great-uncle's heartbeat. At least for a moment.”

 _It's such a precious thing, I nearly lost you both_. Thorin sighs, and looks at the baby, and at the chair, and at his hands, and then marches over to the chair, and glares at Dwalin-- but when he feels Kiara's warmth against his skin, her head resting against his chest, he feels like the world stops, sudden, and he knows nothing matters if not the little wrinkle of her nose.

“Oh.”

Dwalin pulls back and leans against the wall across from them, and his lungs feel like they've suddenly remembered how to live. Kiara presses a small hand to Thorin's chest, balls it up in a fist, grabs a little of his chest hair.

“Oi, little one. You're hurting me.”

His voice so low Dwalin can barely hear it. His voice so delicate Dwalin has to take a single, shaky breath and look away. Love has its ways of falling like snow over tombstones. Love has this way of never truly leaving, and like when he saw him hold Fili for the first time, Dwalin knows his heart's never truly been broken, the blood's never truly stopped beating-- not when he sees Thorin like this, blue eyes shining as they stare at a small baby dozing off on his chest.

“All right, Kiara. Back into the incubator.”

He picks her off his chest as if he were holding bones made of glass, and in a way he is. Slow, carefully measuring every movement as he places her back inside the incubator, and he smiles at her sleeping.

“I'll go get the nurse to hook her back up.”

“Wait.”

Dwalin stops halfway to the room's door.

“Yes?”

Kiara's chest is moving rhythmically, slow, like she's breathing with the weight of the stars in her little, wrinkled hands. Thorin smiles at her. Thorin clears his throat.

“Those things. You said.”

“I say a lot of things all the time.”

Thorin scowls at him, “I mean what you said when we were in Smaug's study.”

Here it begins: here it blossoms again.

“What about that?”

“Did you mean it?”

Dwalin's breath like a missing heart beat.

“Every word. You know that.”

When Thorin looks at him after he's sighed and looked at the wall for a full handful of seconds, his eyes are glistening.

“I... I miss you.”

Thorin's voice that murmurs it, and slips in the slots of the words Dwalin had spoken. Sometimes death brings clarity. Other times it simply brings courage.

“Thorin?”

But Thorin just shrugs, “I miss you. Every single day.”

“ _Thorin_.”

He turns so he can fully look at Dwalin.

“Would you take me back? Even after everything I've been and done, even-- even after this?” and he gestures to the scarf, and his smile is everything but happy. Dwalin simply points at the scar on his own face.

“You took me back after this.”

And Thorin scoffs and smirks, “As if you ever gave me a _choice_ , you Scottish bastard.”

Kiara fusses a little louder, Dwalin doesn't know how to tear himself back into the world.

“I'll go-- I'll go get the nurse.”

“Dwalin. I love you.”

And that's the way life begins once again. That's the way he finds his own hands once again: in words he's said on impulse, in healing he's begun through memories and thorns. He spits blood and he knows he is cleansing himself from the inside. There is so much poison to purge, so many scars to kiss until they are faded.

“I _never_ stopped loving you.”

One hand on the doorknob, the door slightly open, his shoulders that shake and roll and every moment of the last eleven years hanging between them. Every missed smile. Every lost laugh.

“I know.”

***

“I think I set your uncles back up.”

She says this as she's chopping vegetables for dinner. Fili noses through the freezer, “There's still a bunch of the stuff Mum left from when she was here last month. Should I heat it up?”

“What is there?”

“Pe... it looks like peas?” he pulls out a frozen tupperware and frowns at it before opening and sniffing, which yields no result, and then narrowing his eyes at it intently, “I... think it's peas.”

“Well, either way it's defrosting, so chuck it into a pan. Thorin came to visit Kiara today.”

“Holy shit. He's returning to society.”

Fili limps across the kitchen to grab a pan.

“Where's your cane?”

“Upstairs. I'm fine, I got this.”

“I can't pick you up if you fall.”

“You can leave me there and feed me through a tube. With a few pillows and a blanket I'll be on top of the world.”

Becca snorts and throws the zucchini into the pasta sauce.


End file.
